Demitasse
by Misaia
Summary: The recipe for a relationship: one very no good, very bad, particularly horrendous morning, two burnt fingers, some orange peel, shaved fine, and one irritatingly handsome stranger who clearly doesn't understand the rules of Levi's neatly ordered world. Coffeeshop AU, Erwin/Levi
1. Caffe Medici

Levi yawned and rubbed his eyes, still trying to wake up even as the morning's rays shone through the coffee shop's plate glass front windows. It was far too early for working, and Levi was personally of the opinion that it was criminal to get out of bed and go to work before the sun did. But the sun didn't have a boss (unless one were to believe in Greek or Roman mythology or any form of higher being), and the sun probably didn't have such worldly troubles as money.

"Do you want a side of your coffee with your milk?" Zöe asked, bustling around behind him, wiping down the espresso machines and checking to make sure they had enough filters and cups and lids for the day. She turned, gave him a sunny smile (Levi was also personally of the opinion that she was possessed by some demon; no one in their right mind could be this happy to be up this early, the clock indicated it was just a few minutes past six-thirty), and handed him a paper cup.

He rolled his eyes at her, and stretched, taking a sip of his milky coffee, just the slightest hint of bitterness clinging to the corners of his mouth. He exhaled, sighing, setting the paper cup down by the register. He pressed a few buttons, frowned at the still-stubbornly closed drawer, cursed a bit, slapped it when Zöe was in the storeroom measuring out coffee grounds and opening new boxes of peppermint and oolong tea. Once the drawer finally dislodged itself with a clang that Levi felt sure could have risen the dead, he took out cardboard rolls of coins, new pennies and nickels and dimes and quarters, shiny and smelling of copper and soap, and spilled them into the drawer's slots with a shower of tiny clinks that were supremely satisfying.

He took another sip of his coffee, took another glance at the clock. Six-fifty.

He sighed, rubbing at the back of his neck, going out from behind the counter to make sure the sugar packets and straws and canisters of spices were all lined up and neatly arranged on the table just to the side of the espresso machine. He was relatively particular about it, and though Zöe teased him to no end about it, cinnamon had to be in the middle, flanked neatly by the bottle of liquid syrup and the tin of chai spice which released soft scents of cardamom and nutmeg whenever somebody opened it. He uncapped the top now, took a whiff, sending his nose tingling with the giddy scent, something like Christmas and Thanksgiving and the middle of summer all at the same time.

"Levi!" Zöe shouted from the counter, where she was brewing espresso. "Stop snorting the chai and unlock the door! It's seven."

He rolled his eyes at her, vaguely wondered if she knew that injecting nutmeg intravenously was lethal, before going over to the door and unlocking it.

* * *

Levi hated mornings. Waking up was always an inconvenience, but this particular morning was particularly bad. He'd burnt his index finger on his toaster that morning (surprisingly, his bread had come out looking as untoasted as it had going in), he hadn't had time to iron his shirt, and it wasn't until he'd gotten on the subway to go to work that he looked down and found that he was wearing two different shoes. He consoled himself with the fact that nobody would notice unless they were doing a very thorough inspection of his footwear, but he'd noticed, and that was just as bad.

He was able to distract himself with work, rote and boring, the high-level executives coming in and ordering the same thing after the same thing. Nonfat lattes, cappuccinos, Americanos with extra shots of espresso, and he strode quickly between the register and the espresso machine and the sinks, pouring cream and froth into the tops of wide-mouthed glass mugs into swirls and leaves and little cats with dots of chocolate syrup for the eyes. If one were to ask about the coffee art (and one would specifically NOT ask, Levi looked frighteningly uninviting in the mornings), he would probably tell you that he was just trying to keep his brain from rotting from work-related monotony through artistic pursuit. At this point, he would glare you down and you would hurry away, your cat-topped coffee clutched in your hands.

It wasn't until after the morning rush ended at half-past nine and Levi's wrist was slightly sore from whipping froth and cream that the very bad, very no-good, very particularly horrendous thing happened.

"I would like a Caffe Medici, please."

Levi looked up from the register where he was sorting out the crumpled bills from the non-crumpled ones specifically for the purpose of smoothing them out later.

"You'd like a what now?" he asked in disbelief. Though listed right up there on the chalkboard menu along with the lattes and mochas, close to nobody ordered it due to a lack of knowledge about what the drink itself was.

"A Caffe Medici," was the reply, and Levi was hard pressed to drag his eyes away from the twinkling blue eyes that looked down at him. He looked quite like that one actor he'd seen on television the other night in some superhero movie or another. "I'm not Captain America, if that's what you're wondering."

Levi tore his gaze away, glowering as the man laughed and he punched buttons furiously on the register, nearly ripping the $5 out of the man's hand (good God he hadn't been aware people could have such big hands, but then again the man himself was practically a giant) and glaring down at Lincoln angrily as though it were the source of all his problems. Abe looked back up at him with a stern look, and Levi frowned disapprovingly at him, noting the creases and rips down the middle and the spots of tape where it had been patched together. There wouldn't be any redemption for that bill, and Levi was seriously considering telling the man that it was positively illegal to accept defaced currency, and could he please provide another bill or another form of payment, but he looked back up and was slightly miffed to find that the man had already gone over to fiddle with the tins of spices. Levi almost gave himself an aneurysm watching the man absentmindedly move the tin of chai to the middle, and he abruptly turned around to brew the double shot of espresso.

He shaved orange peel into the bottom of a glass cup, poured in a generous spoonful of chocolate syrup before reaching out for the espresso. Unfortunately, the metal was frighteningly hot, hotter than usual, and Levi swore as he dropped the double shot on the floor. He didn't even have to look up to know the man was laughing at him, and he ground his teeth together as he placed another cup under the drip.

He finished the drink off with a little dollop of whipped cream and a few gratings of dark chocolate, and holding it firmly in his unburnt hand, walked over to the man and set it down with a satisfying sounding chink of glass on glass.

The man looked up at him, nodded his head a little bit in thanks. Levi was walking back to the register, ready to settle in for a comforting morning of smoothing out crumpled currency, when the man called out, "Did you know you're wearing two different shoes?"

Levi didn't realise he'd been clenching his teeth until he finally stared daggers at the strong lines of the stranger's back as he walked out the door and relaxed an infinitesimal amount, his jaw aching with the sudden release of pressure.

"He was cute," Zöe said from behind him, staring out the plate glass windows dreamily at the stranger's retreating back on the pavement outside. "He looks fantastic."

"He's a monster," Levi snarled viciously, and retreated to the storeroom to count coffee filters for the rest of the morning.


	2. Caffe Latte

The next time Levi saw him it was just a few days later in the early afternoon. He came in, setting the bells hung over the entrance jingling. Levi looked up from his table in the corner where he was absentmindedly sipping a cup of coffee milk and procrastinating on mopping up the floors. Levi didn't particularly like looking at the spilt puddle of coffee that was over in the corner by the spices table, but he felt sure the mop in the back of the storeroom was slowly but surely growing the next epidemic. He was sorely tempted to bring a mop from home, or better yet, his Swiffer, but the subway wasn't exactly the cleanest place in which to transport it. Levi suppressed a shudder at the thought of what might be growing beneath the carpeted seats.

That morning had been relatively uneventful: namely, he'd had time to press his shirt, his toast came out perfectly toasty (he'd still burnt his thumb trying to extract it from the toaster's gaping maw, however), and he was wearing the matching shoes. Under other circumstances, Levi should have been perfectly content, but he found himself glaring in irritation at the blonde man's back as he walked up to the counter and contemplated the menu for a few moments before looking around, his blue eyes settling on him in the corner. Levi had half a mind to call for Zöe, who was off in the storeroom probably scraping off samples for her petri dish from the sink in the back, but he figured that that would be a rather immature course of action. And Levi Ackerman was nothing if not mature.

"Hi," the man said, smiling at him as Levi walked over and situated himself behind the register. The bills were sorted just the way he liked them, the crispest, cleanest on the top, and the uglier ones somewhere in the middle and back of the stack. "I see you're wearing matching shoes today."

"Yes," Levi sniffed, "the other day was a hideous aberration, never to be repeated." He tried to ignore the way the stranger was smiling at him, tried to ignore the fact that this particular day the man's choice of outfit was particularly dashing (he'd always been a sucker for polo sweater vests, and the ice blue of the man's polo shirt really did wonders for his eyes), tried to ignore the way the stranger's (new?) black-framed glasses screamed of intelligence. Had Levi been any other person, he might have found himself thinking that the stranger was incredibly handsome. However, since he was Levi, he found himself thinking that the stranger was probably incredibly imbecilic and just happened to have an impeccable appearance and sense of fashion.

He cleared his throat. "What did you say you wanted?"

The stranger shook his head. "I didn't yet," he said. "I was thinking of getting another Caffe Medici, but after last time, I figured I'd save your poor fingers from another burn."

Levi scowled at him. "I'm perfectly capable of making doppios, thank you very much," he told him, a little irritated at the way he had to crane his neck back to look up at the man.

"Oh? Your thumb says otherwise," the man said, pointing to Levi's hand which was resting on top of the counter. Levi frowned and snatched the offending limb back, muttered something about his vicious toaster and its quest for blood that had the stranger laughing.

"You know, you ought to smile more," the man told him, reaching over the counter and flicking Levi's cheek. Levi's vision flashed red and he was seriously contemplating sinking his teeth into the man's hand. "You'll get wrinkles before too long."

"Thanks for the advice, Professor," he said, rolling his eyes. The man looked amused and just the tiniest bit surprised.

"How'd you deduce that one?" he asked, resting his elbows on the counter and looking down at Levi. Levi, against all his principles, started praying to some higher being that another customer would walk in so the stranger would be forced to place an order and sit down.

Levi shrugged, pointed at the stranger's chest. "I don't know many other professions in which one could possibly be coerced into buying and wearing a pocket protector. And the university isn't too far from here."

The man smiled at him, and Levi frowned, trying to ignore the crinkles in the corners of the man's eyes and biting at the inside of his cheek to stop an errant, wayward smile from showing up.

He was about to step way out of line, and ask the man if he too watched Sherlock, but the bells over the door set up clanging again and a gaggle of university students spilled in, clutching bookbags and laptops and textbooks with papers all loose stuffed inside.

"Erwin!" one of the girls called, and the man turned away from Levi to greet her.

The students surrounded him, all chattering away at once, and Levi caught snatches of their conversation, "wanted to talk to you about my paper topic," "wondered if you might be able to change your office hours this week, I've got volleyball practice," "hoped we could go over the answers to the practice exam you posted online."

"What brings you guys here?" the man - Erwin - asked them, and one of the laptop-toting students shot a shy glance at Levi before saying, "The barista here does really good latte art, and it's Mikasa's birthday, but we don't really have much money to treat her to an actual dinner." Attention turned to a dark-haired girl in half-open beige jacket, who had no comment on the whole matter.

"Is that right?" Erwin asked, turning to Mikasa, who just gave him a short nod and a little mumble of confirmation. "Well, in that case, let me get this one. God knows you're paying enough for tuition as it is."

* * *

The next twenty minutes or so, Levi hurried from the steam pitcher to the espresso machine and back again, pouring out carefully measured shots of espresso into wide-mouthed cups and whisking whipped cream and foam in separate bowls. He bent over the cups, the pitcher of steamed milk measured precisely at 153 F clutched firmly in his left hand as he shook his wrist gently over the cups, pouring the steamed milk into the rich brown of the espresso and watching with a sort of content pleasure as the deep brown turned milkier and he drew swirls and rosettes and fleur de lis on the surface.

For Mikasa's, he carefully shaped a mound of foam on the surface of the coffee, taking a toothpick and dragging it through chocolate syrup, lightly tracing over the foam to form round eyes and trace little brown whiskers onto the cat's face. At the other half of the cup, he poured a careful little swirl of milk, dragging little horizontal chocolate lines through the white for the cat's striped tail. He stepped back and looked at the finished work in satisfaction before carefully placing the cups onto a tray and carrying the tray over to where Erwin and his students were chatting.

They oohed and aahed over the designs, and Levi busied himself with cleaning up the pitchers and whisks and bowls, humming to himself and listening to the sounds of their conversation. Once the utensils and equipment was pristine and glistening again, Levi busied himself with wiping down the counter, finding his eyes straying of their own accord towards Erwin, who was lounging in his chair, talking to his students and his hands tracing through the air as he made gestures to supplement his sentences. Levi rested his face in his palm, absentmindedly wiping down the granite, and watched the afternoon sun thread through Erwin's hair.

After another half-hour or so and an impromptu song of "Happy Birthday, happy birthday to you!" led by a lean dark-haired boy with the most interesting turquoise eyes Levi had ever seen, Erwin finally stood up and stretched, begging his leave, something about papers to grade and exams to revise. His students stood up as well, leaving their empty cups scattered around the black granite tabletops, and Mikasa caught Levi's eye as she was leaving, gave him a short nod that Levi duly returned.

He went over to stack the cups into a black plastic bin when a small corner of green trapped under a saucer caught his eye. He put the empty cup and saucer into his bin, looked at the $5 bill - the very neat, very uncrumpled, very untorn - $5 bill.

He turned it over, looked at Abe's uncompromising gaze, squinted to read the words written hastily in black scrawl just to the left of the president's face.

"Consider it a replacement for last time."

He smiled to himself, made a mental note to tell Erwin that writing on currency was still technically defacement the next time he came in, and decided that perhaps he wasn't quite as imbecilic as he previously thought.


	3. Espresso Doppio

Erwin comes in a few days later on a Monday morning, right at seven on the dot, as Levi is still rubbing the sleep out of his eyes and halfheartedly tucking in his shirt and creasing his collar. His toaster had given him a particular bad burn, and he'd grumbled the whole subway ride over, cradling his burnt thumb in his other hand and scowling at anybody who happened to look at him in just the slightest off way.

Levi, however, does find his day brightening marginally when Erwin bursts through the coffee shop's front door, sending the bells jingling violently. He looks worse than Levi currently feels, minus the homicidal toaster, his dress shirt untucked and wrinkled, the collar falling down on one side, and the buttons done up wrong. Levi almost laughed at the way Erwin looked at him despairingly as he approached the counter, his hair messy and falling over one eye, and he had to bite the inside of his cheek to stop himself from giggling at how absurd he looked.

"I want whatever the strongest thing you have is," Erwin said, fumbling in his pocket and extracting a rather crumpled $5. "And then make two of them."

Levi arched a questioning eyebrow at him, and Erwin huffed a sigh and rolled his blue eyes at Levi before reaching out and pressing his palms against the bill, frowning as he smoothed out the wrinkles and creases. Levi had to fight back a smile as he plucked the now relatively smooth bill from beneath Erwin's palms and tucked it into the cash register before turning to the espresso machine and sliding a white porcelain cup beneath the drip. Erwin's footsteps clacked away, and he turned to watch him practically fling himself into a seat in the corner before pulling his black messenger bag onto his lap and rifling through it, pulling out a mess of papers and slapping them on the black granite tabletop. Levi watched as he ran his hands through his hair, tugging at the strands in the back - why were they a slightly darker colour than the rest? Levi wondered - in despair, making them stick straight out from his head and making him look like a rather distressed chicken. Levi snickered to himself as he pulled the first cup out from under the drip and stuck another one in.

Levi set Erwin's two espresso doppios to the side before taking a small shot from the machine and pouring it into a cup with a healthy amount of milk. Carefully balancing the three items in his hands, he wandered over to the table where Erwin sat, tugging at his hair with one hand while the other frantically scribbled through the papers, leaving smatterings of red ink all over the sleeves of his shirt and the backs of his hands.

"My God, my God, I can't even read this, what does it say, it's like reading Arabic," Erwin was muttering under his breath. He jumped as Levi sat down in the seat across from him, his wrist jerking and setting red streaking all the way through a paragraph. Levi set his espresso doppios in front of him with two satisfying, solid thunks before resting his chin in one hand and cradling his coffee milk with the other, his gaze wandering over the handwritten papers.

"Grading?" he asked, as Erwin picked up a white porcelain cup - but my God his hands really were huge, or maybe espresso cups had just gotten tinier from the day before - and drained the glass in one swallow.

"Oh my God," Erwin spluttered, choking and coughing. "What the hell is that?" he asked, looking up at Levi. "My heart just skipped about ten beats."

Levi shrugged, taking another sip of his coffee milk. "You wanted the strongest thing we offered, so I made you doppios." Levi looked at the other, still-full porcelain cup by Erwin's hand. "You're probably okay to drink that. I don't know how much caffeine is needed to send a person into cardiac arrest, but a quadruple shot probably won't do you in. I know CPR, though, in that unlikely event. At any rate, you'd better drink that. I'm sure as hell not going to, it's way too disgusting. It's worse cold, too."

Erwin glared at the cup as though it were completely to blame for his current misery before reaching out and tipping it into his mouth. Levi watched the smooth lines of his throat with fascination, the Adam's apple bobbing up and down. Erwin grimaced as he set the cup down, shuddering at the bitter taste, and returned to rifling through the papers and scrawling across them in red ink. Levi sighed and curled up in his armchair, closing his eyes and breathing in the soft, sweet scent of his coffee milk, listening to Erwin mumbling under his breath and trying to get himself mentally motivated for the morning rush, which was due to start any minute now.

"This is either the best allegory I've ever read or the worst one," Erwin muttered. "Hey, do you know anything about Norse mythology?"

Levi plucked the paper out from under Erwin's pen, squinting at the writing - it really was like trying to read Arabic - and taking a few moments to read through the paragraph where Erwin's markings ended. He took a sip of his coffee milk, read the next sentence, and then almost spat it out all over the page with a laugh.

"Are you all right?" Erwin asked, concerned. "Are you choking?" When Levi didn't reply, coughing, Erwin reached over the table, grasping him by the shoulders and shaking. "Blink twice if you're dying," Erwin said frantically, "I don't know CPR so if you need an ambulance I'm going to need to know right now."

Levi pushed him away, still gasping for breath, his eyes filled with merry tears and his cup of coffee milk dangerously close to spilling all over the floor. Once he'd got his breath back, he looked across the table at Erwin, who still looked terribly worried about Levi's close brush with death, and dissolved into laughter all over again.

"Oh, God," he said, still giggling a bit as he wiped his eyes and handed the paper back to Erwin. "You're not very in tune with the times, are you?"

Erwin arched a thick eyebrow at him in confusion. It was rather quite interesting how his eyebrows were brown, Levi thought to himself, considering that his hair was mostly blonde...or maybe he dyed it, and his roots just happened to be showing? Levi too had gone through that phase in his life before he realised that bleaching black hair more often than not turned it a hideous shade of orange. "I wouldn't consider Norse mythology part of 'the times,'" Erwin said, making air quotation marks with his fingers.

Levi bit his tongue to stop himself from having another laughing fit.

"Well, your student there," he said, snorting, "wrote a lovely synopsis of Thor: The Dark World." At his confused look, Levi elaborated: "It's a superhero movie that came out last year."

Erwin looked positively distraught, and tangled his fingers in his hair, tugging on it some more and making even more strands stick up in disarray. It took all of Levi's willpower to keep from laughing at him, or from taking out his mobile and snapping a picture to post on Instagram under the tag #badhairday.

"Oh my God," Erwin whispered, looking off into the distance, "oh my God," he breathed, burying his face in his hands, "I stayed up all night researching obscure Norse gods and goddesses for this?" When he pulled his hands away, Levi had to look away, nearly biting through his lip to stave off his laugh; the streaks of ink on Erwin's hands had managed to smudge all over his cheeks like blush gone wrong, and Levi was seriously contemplating doing an under-the-table candid shot to post on Instagram under the tag #badmakeover, but the man looked so much like a kicked puppy that he decided against it.

The bell behind them rang, and Levi looked over to find the first of the suited executives spilling through the doorway to get their morning lattes before work. He stretched, lounging in his armchair for a few more luxurious moments, before taking Erwin's empty cups and standing up.

"I can't honestly say I know too much about Norse mythology," he said, and Erwin looked up at him, "but the Roman demigod of coffee is named Levi."

"How interesting," Erwin replied, "but I guess it would make sense for you to know that, being that you work here and all..." He trailed off, looked forlornly down at his papers again, and Levi resisted the urge to pat down his hair before he turned on his heel and walked back to the counter to start his day.


	4. Coffee Milk

Levi had determined that Christopher Evans was quite possibly the most attractive combination of genes that was present in the world as of August 22nd, 2014. There was just something about that wheat golden hair, parted to the side, with undertones of brown just barely showing through, and those lovely blue eyes, and the height, and the planes of his cheekbones, that just all came together in a fantastic manner. Levi would never tell anyone this, but he kept a picture of Captain America sans helmet in his wallet, behind his driver's licence, in the place where other people might keep small cropped photos of their children or their pets.

He was taking a quiet moment to admire the beauty of said picture, procrastinating on sweeping up and closing the shop for the night. Zöe had already run off somewhere, shouting something over her shoulder about time-sensitive bacterial cultures and how she had to get over to the lab right away. By "the lab," Levi had assumed she was running off home to her probably highly illegal basement laboratory. As he idly pulled out a half-full cup from under the espresso drip and wiped away any excess drops on the machine's spout, he wondered if he ought to report it to the authorities. Surely the Centre for Disease Control would most likely be interested in whatever epidemic Zöe was growing in her basement, but then again, Levi thought it might be a good idea to keep on Zöe's good side in the unlikely event that she unleashed biological weaponry onto the country.

Levi eyed the half-full cup of espresso, grimacing. He absolutely hated wasting perfectly good espresso; to make matters worse, this wasn't even technically a full shot of espresso, and at best he could probably only make some coffee milk. The shop wasn't technically closed yet, but there was only a half hour left for its opening hours, and if Levi were being well and truly honest with himself, he was just closing up the shop early because he was particularly tired that day and just wanted to go home and ogle Chris Evans's latest photoshoot, armed with a bottle of lotion and a box of tissues.

The bells jangled over the door, and Levi whipped around, his Swiffer held threateningly in hand (his brave little vacuum had survived the subway trip, thankfully, and Levi thought that those 1987 children's movies producers had gotten it all wrong, making a film about the most courageous tiny toaster, when in reality it should have been under the tagline "The Brave Little Swiffer." Granted, Swiffers hadn't been around in those days, but Levi was of the opinion that the world might have been a better place today had that been the case. In his lifetime, he'd gotten along with approximately 33% of the toasters he'd ever encountered, whereas he'd been fast friends with 100% of the Swiffers he'd ever had the privilege of using. His mother had told him as a child that he'd used to have a big brother, but one day he hadn't asked her before toasting a bagel, and the toaster in question ate him up bit by bit. Which was why Levi was an only child. Said toaster still resided in Levi's mother's kitchen, and though he'd been to school and was well aware that toasters did not have suitable anatomy that could be used for devouring a child, he was still wary of the machine whenever he went over to visit.

"Good Lord!" Erwin shouted, holding up his hands in surrender. "Put that thing down before you take an eye out!" The Swiffer was twitching furiously in front of Erwin's nose, and Levi had assumed a fencing pose in his sudden panic about intruders coming into the coffee shop and riffling through the cash register, crumpling all the bills and stuffing them into burlap sacks and mixing all the denominations together. That thought had Levi more panicked than the thought of actual robbers.

"Oh, it's the Professor," he said, letting the threatening pad of the Swiffer drop a few inches. "I thought you were a burglar, come to burgle me."

Erwin rolled his eyes. "More like you thought I was here to crumple up the bills in your wallet and then leave without smoothing them out." Just the thought of that had Levi's blood pressure jumping up a few points.

"Well," Levi protested, "no normal people come in to buy coffee this late at night." As an afterthought, he lowered the Swiffer fully to the ground and looked up cautiously at Erwin, who, Levi couldn't help but notice, towered over him just like Chris Evans probably would have. If he were to guesstimate, Erwin and Captain America were probably the same height, although Levi would never, ever keep a picture of Erwin in his wallet. "You're...not here to burgle me, are you?"

"Glad you think so much of me," Erwin snorted. "I came by to order something, much like normal people do at a coffee shop. Your front door says you don't close until 9 PM, and you were still in here, so I thought that maybe I could just get something, if it's not too much trouble for you."

Levi sighed, thought of the half-shot of espresso growing cold on the counter, thought about the work it would take to open the top of the espresso machine and heft up the bag of coffee grounds (which Erwin would have to hand up to him, Levi didn't have great balance climbing the little stepladder he needed to reach the top of the machine). He carefully avoided looking at Erwin's hopeful expression, balanced the inconvenience and irritation of making a new pot of espresso with the fact that he had nearly spit coffee milk all over Erwin's student's paper (although it was truly ludicrous), and decided that he was just the slightest bit in the black in the balance of the relationship.

"I've only got a half-shot left, and I can't really work wonders with that," he said, studiously looking at Erwin's forehead and avoiding his gaze.

Erwin pouted, honest to God pouted, and Levi suddenly felt the balance tip dangerously into the red.

"Fine, fine," he grumbled, gently leaning the Swiffer against a table. "I'll see what I can do, but you'd better finish Swiffering up the floor in the meantime."

Erwin grabbed the Swiffer with a huge, enthusiastic smile that nearly shattered Levi's pupils with its brightness, and before Levi could tell him to please be gentle with Sally (the Swiffer; Levi was fond of naming his appliances), began running the Swiffer over the floor in neat parallel, slightly overlapping lines, exactly as Levi had been doing. Levi watched him for a bit, nibbling anxiously at his lower lip and trying to ignore the fact that from behind, (and, if Levi were being well and truly honest with himself, from the front) Erwin Smith looked a fair bit like Chris Evans.

* * *

Levi hummed to himself as he whipped cream in a stainless steel mixing bowl, flicking in chai spice from the precious tin on the corner table into the cream, which was rapidly rising into stiff peaks. The spice sent hues of cinnamon and nutmeg through the air, and Levi took a deep breath, another, another, almost burying his face in the green-and-silver tin. When he looked up, Erwin was standing on the other side of the counter, Sally held firmly in hand, gaping at him.

"Are you...are you sniffing the spices?" he asked, almost incredulously. Levi shot him a glare, closed the lid firmly, and pushed it away from him. The cream in the stainless steel bowl was flecked with chai spice, and he carried the bowl over to the other counter, where he'd mixed the half-shot of espresso with a generous pouring of milk and some half-and-half. The coffee milk was a perfectly lovely shade of beige, and he took a spoon and covered the top of the cup with the spice-flecked cream. He hummed to himself as he drizzled a spoonful of chocolate syrup across the top of the cream, and presented it to Erwin with a flourish in satisfaction at another job well done.

"It's coffee milk," he said, pushing it towards Erwin, "and the best thing I could come up with under the circumstances."

Erwin traded Sally the Swiffer for the cup of coffee milk, and Levi watched as Erwin took a sip and looked up at him, his mouth ringed with froth.

"It's very sweet," Erwin commented, "but good. I like it."

Levi busied himself with wiping down the counters, polishing the espresso machine to a fresh shine, topping up the canisters of sugar and cinnamon, and making sure the table of spices was properly arranged. Erwin sat at his customary table in the corner, sipping at his coffee milk and looking out the window.

"I guess I get why you like the spices so much," Erwin said after a few minutes, when Levi had already recounted the bills in the cash register three times over and assured himself that they were all in their proper slots and properly uncreased. "They're nice." Erwin tipped his cup back, smearing froth and cream all around the corners of his mouth. "Maybe not nice enough to snort, but still nice."

Levi rolled his eyes at him, flapped away Erwin's $5 with some muttered excuse about how it was the last of the day's coffee and anyway he couldn't very well reopen the cash register and readjust all the bills, now that would have been a true inconvenience. Erwin smiled at him, rubbing at the corners of his mouth with his thumb, and stepped behind the counter to wash his cup. There was just something about strong, tall blondes gripping scrub brushes that Levi particularly enjoyed.

"So," Erwin murmured, reaching up with ease and placing the cup back in its place on one of the higher shelves in the cupboard, a feat which Levi had never previously been successful at without the aid of a stepstool. "I guess I'd better let you be getting back home. It's getting late."

Levi checked his watch, was astonished to find that it was already an hour past closing time. The last subways and buses would have already left, long ago, and he groaned, burying his face in his hands and mentally calculating whether he had enough money to pay for a cab home. He wondered if it would be so horrible to just sleep in the coffee shop for a night; it might be quite pleasant, surrounded by the scent of fresh grounds and lemon floor polish...

"I can give you a ride home, if you want." Erwin was fidgeting, rocking from side to side, not meeting Levi's gaze. "It's probably a good idea, it's kind of dangerous walking home late at night and that kind of stuff..."

"I suppose, yeah," Levi said, secretly grateful. He wasn't sure Sally could manage a night away from her charger, and he wasn't eager to hear her death rattle as her battery pack slowly ran out of juice and he sat by her side, powerless to do anything about it. "Yeah," he said, brightening and managing a smile. "I think I would like that."

* * *

Erwin's car was a silver Toyota that Levi almost had to take a running jump to get into, and Erwin smiled apologetically at him for the inconvenience. The interior of the car was smooth leather that smelled like good leather should, and a slight hint of the pine air freshener that hung from his rear view mirror.

The next few minutes were filled with Levi directing him down side streets and intersections, until he finally pulled up in front of Levi's apartment building. Levi reached for the door handle, but Erwin reached over and clicked the door lock back down. Levi's grip tightened on Sally as he turned to face his potential assailant.

"This is the part where you burgle me, isn't it?" Levi sighed, resigning himself to a fight to the death.

"What is it with you and robbery?" Erwin asked, arching a curious eyebrow at him. "No. I'm not going to pin you down and rip your wallet out of your pocket and crumple up all your bills. I just wanted to say thanks. For putting yourself out of your way."

"Right." Levi wasn't convinced that this was it. "And?"

He couldn't see Erwin's expression in the darkness of the car. "And...um, are you free Friday night?"

Levi stared at his silhouette, his mouth suddenly dry and Sally going limp in his fingers and rolling onto the floor. "Free for what?" he asked cautiously.

Erwin cleared his throat, rubbed the back of his head, and even in the darkness Levi could make out the golden strands sticking straight out again. "For dinner, I guess. Or for a movie. Or both."

Levi gaped at him, even though Erwin probably couldn't see him. At his lack of response, Erwin groaned and buried his face in his hands, slumping over the steering wheel. "God, I'm so bad at this," he muttered to himself. "We haven't even been properly introduced yet." He held out a broad hand to Levi. "I'm Erwin Smith, assistant professor of psychology, but you probably already knew all that stuff. And you are?"

Levi marvelled at the way his hand all but disappeared inside Erwin's palm. "I'm Levi Ackerman, professional latte artist."

A pause.

"A few weeks ago, didn't you say that Levi was the name for the Roman -"

"Oh, look at the time," Levi cut in quickly, flapping his hand at the dashboard clock. "I really must be going, thanks for the ride, really appreciated." He tugged up the car lock before Erwin could finish his sentence, and hurried into his apartment building, hunching his shoulders to hide the scarlet flush on his cheeks from the highly-interested receptionist.

It wasn't until he'd unlocked the door to his flat and had slumped down against it, tugging at his hair, that he realised he'd left Sally in the car. And that he'd never actually answered Erwin's question.


	5. Instant Mix

Levi spent the next few days alternating between abject despair, embarrassment, and mortification at his own actions. It was bad enough that he'd abandoned Sally to Erwin's mercy and she had probably breathed her last in the passenger seat of Erwin's car. Granted, the leather seats had been very clean the last time Levi had seen them, and Sally had survived the ride into work on the filthy subway, but it didn't make him feel any better about leaving her behind. He felt like Kate Winslet in Titanic (which he'd seen a total of 34 times) or like Mel Gibson in Casanova (which he'd seen only 10 times, owing to the fact that he found Leonardo DiCaprio much more fanciable). He woke up every morning and stared very hard at the empty corner of his kitchen pantry that Sally had previously occupied, her charger dangling from the wall, empty and abandoned. He'd dragged his old mop out of retirement (her name was Gretchen) and had swabbed his entire apartment, furiously staring at the floor and trying not to pout.

Even Chris Evans' latest photoshoot had done nothing to cheer him up. He flicked through the pictures on his laptop listlessly, but not even the actor's lovely face could distract him from his misery. It didn't help that he'd grown a beard that made him look quite like a lumberjack, which Levi was not a big fan of, and he'd been forced to scroll back to a few other photoshoots where he appeared sans facial hair. More irritating was the fact that Erwin's face kept popping up in his mind when he went back to the earlier photoshoots, because Levi had decided it was time to be well and truly honest with himself and acknowledge the fact that clearly tall, well-built, blonde men were not all too uncommon, and it had been just a matter of probability that he'd run into a Chris Evans lookalike sooner or later.

And if Levi was being very, very frank, he did find the professor attractive, in his own pocket-protector, Norse-mythology kind of way. He'd even gone so far as to scrawl on the back of his Chris Evans' wallet-sized photograph a little scribble of Erwin's name.

He found himself craning his neck over the counter, standing up on his tiptoes every time the entrance bells jangled, simultaneously hoping it was him and fervently praying that it wasn't him. The week wore on without a single sighting of Erwin, and Levi slowly but surely began to go mad, wondering if the professor was avoiding him on purpose.

He holed up in a corner of the stockroom during his breaks, clutching the canister of chai spice to his chest and rocking back and forth, staring at the coffee filters and extra porcelain cups and running through his head all of the other ways in which his relationship, his very, hideously platonic relationship, with Erwin could have gone. And then this led to him thinking about that one time he hadn't helped that old lady across the street, and the time when his mother had berated him about not going to church more often, and then that other time in school when he'd punched that one guy, and basically went on a mental guilt trip of everything he'd done wrong in his life, as we are all prone to doing at some point in our lives.

He was just getting to his early childhood and regretting that he hadn't drunk more milk as a kid when Zöe stuck her head in, frowned at him, and told him to get out of the cupboard and go and get some fresh air, and oh, he had someone asking for him, that very cute man that had been coming in lately.

Levi almost left fingernail scratches on the wood floor as she dragged him out.

It was almost six in the evening, and the setting sun sent flares across Levi's vision, blinding him and making him squint, haloing the figure towering over him on the other side of the counter in an almost godly aura. If Levi had been religious, he would have been awestruck. However, he was not, and stood there cupping his hands over his eyes and waiting for his vision to return to him.

As it turned out, the vision that greeted him was a far better sight than he'd expected.

The first thing he saw was Sally, looking alive and well and rejuvenated, her Swiffer pad freshly changed and sparklingly white. Her battery indicator was green, and Levi almost cried tears of joy. He reached out to grab for her, but a broad hand grabbed him by the wrist and stayed his hand, and he was left gaping up at none other but Erwin.

"I will be holding Sally hostage," he announced, and Levi readied himself to sink teeth into the man's hand. The nerve of him! - "Until you agree to accompany me to dinner and a film tonight, after your shift."

Levi got ready, tensing the muscles in his legs and wondering if it would be particularly hard to vault heroically over the counter and rescue Sally from Erwin's clutches and run off dramatically into the sunset, but Zöe clearly has other plans for him, and pushes him forward while simultaneously divesting him of his black apron and telling Erwin that it was such a coincidence that Levi's shift happened to end right that minute.

Levi squirmed all the way to Erwin's car, and would have grabbed Sally and made a mad dash for it once they were out of the coffeeshop, but Sally really did have quite a fragile constitution and was not exactly cut out for a life on the run. And besides, it looked as though Erwin had taken decent care of her in the past few days, which raised him a few notches in Levi's opinion.

Currently, Levi's rating of Erwin was hovering somewhere in the 50% range. Which was much farther up the scale than many other beings. Zöe was currently in the negative, right there below zero with Levi's toaster. It had run rampant in the past few days, clearly determined to take advantage of Levi's upset moods, and had set everything in its immediate vicinity to scorching hot. Levi found this out while ripping a paper towel off the roll.

Levi plopped himself into the passenger seat of Erwin's Toyota, and a quick glance to his left showed that Erwin looked almost as nervous as Levi presently felt. Being that he'd already clicked the door locks shut and had driven off into traffic, Levi grabbed Sally's handle for reassurance and tried to calm the rapid thudding of his heart.

* * *

It was a "Date," with a capital D, which could also be used to describe a "Disaster," or alternatively, a "Delightful Time," depending on how one looked at it. The movie had been good, not something Levi would have picked out for himself to watch (he was not really a big fan of Chris Pratt), but he'd rather enjoyed Erwin laughing at the film beside him. He had a deep, rolling laugh that Levi thought sounded suitable for a potential leader of the free world (or, what Captain America would have sounded like had he been told a particularly good joke.)

However, dinner was more than a bit awkward. Levi spent most of the time absentmindedly wondering what people talked about on these sorts of things. So far, their conversation had consisted mostly of rapid-fire question and answers, such as "How old are you?" "Have you been out of the country in the past 7 years?" and "What is your blood type?"

The last one, Levi felt, was an incredibly relevant question. Erwin had rolled his eyes and told him through a mouthful of chicken that he was B+. Which, coincidentally, matched Levi's, and Levi felt slightly reassured in that, if something horrendous were to happen, he'd be able to have the opportunity to save/be saved by a Chris Evans lookalike.

He'd pulled out his wallet to pay his half of the bill and had been in the process of sliding his credit card and driver's license out of their slots, when Erwin frantically waved his hand away and told him that it wasn't a problem, knocking Chris Evans' wallet-sized photo fluttering to the ground. Levi was torn momentarily between making a dive for the photograph and forcing a method of payment onto the check, but Erwin reminded him that he'd dropped something, and the thought of Chris Evans' face getting all dirty from carpet that looked like it hadn't been vacuumed in three years set Levi's heart to racing more than it already currently was.

Once he reemerged from under the tablecloth, the waiter was already walking away with the check, and Erwin was smiling that infuriating smile of his at him. Levi glared at him, but the man seemed incapable of being intimidated.

Erwin watched as Levi carefully slotted Chris Evans' photo back into his wallet behind his driver's licence, arched an eyebrow at him.

"A friend of yours?" he asked nonchalantly, having not gotten quite a straight look at the photograph.

"Er," Levi hemmed and hawed, wondering how to answer the question. "Something like that," he agreed, and Erwin's eyebrows furrowed just the slightest. Levi wondered what he'd said wrong.

* * *

Erwin sighed heavily as he set in his car to Park in front of Levi's apartment building.

"Perhaps it's my fault, being that I practically forced you into tonight," he admitted. "But I wouldn't had I known you were already...seeing someone else."

Levi, who'd been gazing out the window and thinking that perhaps tonight hadn't been quite so bad, gawked at him. "I am?" he asked, completely dumbfounded by this news.

"Well, the person in your wallet, I'm assuming," Erwin said, slumping over the steering wheel, and Levi felt so bad about it that he even went so far as to tug his wallet out of his pocket and wrest his driver's licence from the plastic slot. He held the picture up for Erwin's inspection.

Erwin looked up halfheartedly, glanced back down at the wheel before suddenly turning back to Levi and clicking on the overhead light. "That's me!" he exclaimed, grabbing the wallet out of Levi's hand and squinting down at the photograph. "Why do you have a picture of me in your wallet?" he asked, looking back at Levi, who was only getting more and more confused by the second.

"That's not a picture of you!" he protested, but Erwin was already sliding the photograph out of the slit and squinting at it in the car's half-light.

"This is definitely me," he said after a few moments. "It even has my name written on the back!"

Levi flushed scarlet, and thought for a half second that he was very likely to pass out from the sudden rush. He would have come up with a retort, but Erwin was already pulling him towards him by the lapels of his jacket, and he opened his mouth to protest, stop, you'll rip it, I'll have you know this is Dior, but his words were lost as Erwin pressed a kiss to his slack mouth.

"You like me," he said, pulling away and shooting Levi a triumphant grin that Levi could see even in the darkness, "you liiiiiiike me."

"I definitely don't!" Levi protested, his hand scrabbling around the backseat for Sally. "Don't be an idiot, I don't like you, I don't like you..."

He chanted this without stopping, even as Erwin hopped out, dragged him out of his side of the car, Sally clutched in his limp hands, marched him past the highly-amused receptionist, pressed him into the lift. He kept on repeating himself and his denials, hoping that even as he pressed the button for his floor and limply lifted keys to unlock his flat, that it would come true.

"I don't like you," he said again, more forcefully, as Erwin pinned him against the inside of his apartment's door, one broad hand wrapping around Levi's wrists and pinning them to the mahogany above his head.

"I don't like you," he mumbled into a moan, his voice breaking as Erwin nibbled kisses into his neck, leaving a little string of strawberry bruises that Levi couldn't bring himself to care about at the present moment.

"I don't like you," he protested, even as Erwin's other hand pushed his jacket off his shoulders and slipped under his shirt, fingers creeping across his skin.

"I don't -" he began, losing his breath halfway through the sentence as Erwin's hand, burning, slid the button of his jeans out of its confines, carefully undid the zip, curled around Levi with a tenderness that had Levi gritting his teeth and throwing his head back into the cradle of Erwin's other hand. He opened his eyes, surprised by the lack of sudden pain, found himself staring up into his eyes.

"I thought you might do that," Erwin explained, smiling, and Levi opened his mouth again -

"I know, you don't like me," Erwin said, with a grin, and kissed Levi again.

* * *

Levi woke up the next morning, aching and irritatingly sticky, to bangs and half-hushed curses emanating from his kitchen. He winced as he sat up, looked down at himself, groaned and flopped back down into the sheets at the vast quantity of strawberry kiss marks littered all over his body. The toaster was certainly a master of self-defence and aggression, he rationalised to himself, so the would-be thief would probably have their hands full.

"God," Erwin muttered as he burst into the bedroom, carrying a tray of what actually looked like pretty decent toast and other assorted breakfast items. "Has anyone told you your toaster is demonic?"

Levi rolled onto his side, looked up at Erwin, and stretched out a hand to accept a cup of coffee.

"And for a self proclaimed professional latte artist slash demigod such as yourself," Erwin continued, the mattress dipping as he climbed onto it, "you ought to be ashamed, only having instant coffee mix in your pantry." Levi would have told him that there would absolutely be no eating in bed, but he'd gone to the trouble of making breakfast (his hands sported several burns that were already starting to blister), and the events of the past few hours already broke several of Levi's rules in regards to himself, his conduct, and his cleanliness. The insides of his thighs were sticky and crusty, and he'd definitely have to wash these sheets today, even though it was a Saturday and Saturdays were not laundry days.

"Yes, well," Levi said, sipping at his cup of instant coffee and frowning at its bitterness, "one has to have a bit of humility, it would be far too much to put myself with the gods."

Erwin looked at him incredulously before laughing a bit and offering Levi a piece of perfectly golden toast.

Through crunches of buttery perfection, Levi studied Erwin out of the corner of his eye, and determined that perhaps rules were worth breaking every once in a while.


	6. Espresso Ristretto

Levi made a note to self: It was never a good idea to let Erwin Smith anywhere near his neck, or, at the very least, not to let the man anywhere near his neck until the weather cooled down enough to justify wearing a scarf to work. He'd never gotten so many smirks on the subway before, and he'd made it a point to stare at the grimy grey tiles that adorned the carriage floor and wonder just who'd left that still-smoking cigarette butt in a carriage that was clearly designated 'For Non-Smokers only.' His smoking days were behind him, and though he'd never been one to be opposed to running them down to the filters and tasting the tar thick in the back of his throat, but it just seemed downright rude to drop them all over the place where other people who didn't approve of one's lifestyle might be forced to breathe in the smoky air.

And it was just downright rude for the other subway goers to gape openmouthed at him and smirk at him and the string of raspberry bruises trailing up and down his neck and collarbone. He considered taking up smoking again for a brief moment in between stations when a particularly irritating woman with a hairstyle that probably dated back to 2002 smiled and nudged her friend, whispering in her ear and arching an eyebrow at Levi.

That particular morning, Zöe was far too busy marking up some timetables for her precious prokaryotes' feeding schedules, or something else horrifyingly scientific, and only gave him the briefest of acknowledgements when he walked in.

However, that particular afternoon was not quite as uneventful.

"You've been attacked by a beast," were Mikasa's first words to him from behind a red scarf that Levi swore she might have been wearing just to spite him that particular day. She had come through the door, toting a book and that fawning turquoise-eyed boy whose name, as Levi quickly learned, was Eren, who just also so happened to be the movie-synopses-are-really-university-level-essays writer. "It's left marks all over your neck."

Eren peeked out from over Mikasa's shoulder just long enough for Levi to register a few things about him:

1. He clearly was not in the habit of combing his hair; tufts of brown hair stuck out all over his head and fell over his eyes, and Levi for the life of him really could not see what Mikasa saw in the boy.

2. He was gaping at Levi in awe and perhaps a bit of fascination.

3. He was taller than Levi.

"You have hickeys!" Eren crowed triumphantly, and Levi would have reached over the counter to smack the brat's head down had Erwin not chosen that moment to come in and set the bells above the door jingling merrily. Eren whirled around to confront the new arrival, falling back like a kicked puppy upon laying eyes on Erwin. Clearly, his paper grade had come in significantly less than he'd been hoping, and Levi derived a savage sort of pleasure from this. If the boy were to be held back a semester or two for graduation, that would settle in perfectly with Levi's perception of him as a person.

Erwin just took a glance out of the corner of his eye at Eren, who pouted and skulked off to the corner, shoulders hunched, to examine the tins of chai spice. He reached out a hand to touch it, and Levi felt his heart start to palpitate furiously, when Erwin cleared his throat and he jumped a good foot or so back. Erwin wasn't even looking at him, and in fact was staring up at the chalkboard menu, but Eren meekly retreated to a corner table far away from the chai spice, and Levi felt the knot in his throat relax.

"Feel alright?" Erwin asked, looking pointedly at the hickeys dotting his neck. Levi scowled at him and tried to yank the collar of his dress shirt up higher in a vain attempt to hide the marks. Eren was positively goggle-eyed at his table in the corner, gaping at the proceedings that were going on.

"What'll you be having?" Levi asked him, rather rudely, if an observer were to say so. Said observer would also say that Erwin had the nature of a saint, as he was smiling patiently at Levi.

"Well, I've got quite a lot to do tonight, so if it wouldn't bother you too much, I'd like an Espresso Ristretto, please."

Levi rolled his eyes, frowning and slapping the cash register with the flat of his palm when it refused to open. After a few well placed attacks and quite a lot of stifled giggles from the corner table, the register chinged open, hitting Levi squarely in the abdomen with the drawer. He frowned deeply, closed his eyes and took a few deep breaths to refrain from strangling the nearest inanimate object, and looked up to accept Erwin's (hopefully non-defaced) currency only to find the man's face mere centimeters from his own. He jumped back with a little gasp, as though he'd just been confronted with some long dead Japanese ghost that he'd seen on the television once.

"Although, I would really rather like to have you instead," Erwin murmured, and Levi forced himself to take another deep breath and extract himself from the oceanic blue of Erwin's eyes.

He didn't even have to lean over the counter to slap Erwin over the head, and he muttered to himself that he would make it the bitterest thing Erwin had ever tasted, his cheeks flaming, as he turned to make the drink.

* * *

"What the flaming hell was that about?!" Levi snapped at him once Mikasa had left, her white latte in one hand and Eren hanging off the other. She had set the bells jingling, had turned to acknowledge Levi with a little nod, and had tugged at her scarf almost as if to irritate him even more. Levi thought he might have to revise his opinion of the girl; she was turning out to be rather quite sadistic, and enjoyed taking perverse pleasure in other people's embarrassment. "We're not even a, a thing!" he sputtered, as Erwin was currently towering over him and making him feel quite (enjoyably, though Levi would never admit it) small. Just like a certain actor whose picture was lying somewhere on the floor of Erwin's Toyota might have, if Levi had been even a blip on his radar.

If Levi was reading the signals right, he was practically the Titanic on Erwin's scope. Or perhaps the iceberg. But the iceberg had remained unnoticed until the boat crashed into it? He shook his head, trying to clear his thoughts, it was getting far too complicated an analogy for him, and felt Erwin's fingers grasping his chin and tilting his head upwards.

"Well, I don't know about you, but I'm pretty sure we're a thing," Erwin told him, his eyes twinkling. "I don't usually have intimate relations with people with whom I am not a thing. And you do carry that picture of me around in your wallet, so clearly you've already thought somewhere in this odd mind of yours that we are, in fact, a thing."

"We're not!" Levi protested, but Erwin was pouting at him like he'd just been told his dog of fourteen years had passed away in the night, and Levi hastened to place an addendum at the end of the sentence: "It's not that I'm opposed to the idea, it's just -"

Erwin's hand pressed gently over his mouth.

"I have no desire to hear your objections at the present moment, Mr. Ackerman," he said, and Levi felt a delicious shiver running up his spine, ticking off each individual vertebra along the way, at the deep rumble of Erwin's voice. "It's only polite to give the defence some time to formulate their argument. And, unfortunately, I do not have sufficient time today with which to do so."

Levi pushed his hand away. "So you said," he muttered, turning away from Erwin to wipe down the counters and straighten out the currency in the cash register. "You've got quite a lot to do tonight."

"Indeed I do," Erwin said, with a sweet smile that Levi felt could probably turn milk into custard. "I'll be taking this," - he took the ristretto, now almost cold, knocked it back in one fluid shot and a grimace - "and I will be on my way."

Levi pouted after his back, although he'd never admit that he'd been pouting, not over his dead body. Even the allure of the green-and-silver tin of chai spice held no appeal for him at the present moment, and he rubbed absentmindedly at his neck, tracing absentmindedly over each tender splotch and wondering if perhaps it might not be so bad to be a thing with Erwin Smith.

* * *

Three and a half hours and one terrifying subway ride later (terrifying in the sense that Levi had gotten caught in the evening crowd, all businessmen with huge briefcases that banged into Levi's knees and stomach whenever anyone so much as breathed, and he couldn't help but think of all the germs and communicable diseases that he might be catching at that very moment), Levi trudged past the receptionist and into the lift, watching the floor numbers tick away in little orange lights.

The hallway before his flat smelled really quite nice, someone roasting some sort of meat, and it was truly unfortunate that that roasty, herby scent was overlaid with the smell of something burning quite badly. He was about to slot his key into the door when he noted that it was just the slightest bit open and that if he just laid a hand on the door and pushed in with a bit of effort, it would swing open.

He reached into his messenger bag for something, anything, that he might be able to use as a potential weapon against the intruders that were in his flat. He came up with a few neatly folded receipts, a few pens which had run out of ink, and a packet of gum that had been unopened. He grasped his keys firmly in his hand, all the better for raking down someone's face, or taking off a few select body parts if applied with enough force and determination, and pushed open the door.

The entryway and living room appeared to be untouched, but Levi had watched enough television and Netflix movies to know that the would-be killer was most likely hiding in the bathroom or the shower (or, in one case, the oven, but that was highly unlikely, Levi's oven was rather small and probably growing cobwebs inside from how often it was used), and he crept carefully, quietly, towards the kitchen, from which said delicious (and horrifying) smells were emanating.

Grabbing an umbrella that he'd never even removed from its sheath, he carefully tiptoed towards his kitchen, handle clutched firmly in hand and ready to fend off any would be assailants who had not already had their hands burnt to a crisp by his demon of a toaster. He held his breath as he hid behind the corner of the wall, mentally steeling his nerves to leap out and defend his livelihood, and took a deep breath before taking a peek into his kitchen.

He momentarily thought for a moment that perhaps he'd willed Chris Evans into existence in his kitchen, but the man muttered a curse and turned so his face was just the slightest in profile, and Levi would have been lying if he said he was disappointed it was actually Erwin.

His grasp on the umbrella handle relaxed, and he quietly tiptoed back to the entryway to set the umbrella in its stand, and silently opened the front door and walked out. He rested his forehead against the white wood of the door, looking at the perfectly polished numbers set into the door, and counted to fifteen, taking deep, calming breaths. He slotted his key into the keyhole, turning it and opening the door, so Erwin might have a few moments to finish preparing.

He slammed the door behind him [something he almost never did, but he wasn't sure if Erwin would hear anything else], and stood in the entryway for a few moments, toeing off his shoes and taking a good thirty seconds to arrange them just so, lined up toe to toe with a seam in the wood floor, before clearing his throat loudly, shrugging out of his jacket and hanging it up on the hook beside the door, and walking to the kitchen.

Even though he'd known Erwin was there beforehand, it was no less surprising to him to come upon him in the kitchen, strands of blonde hair sticking to his forehead as he furiously mixed something in a bowl. Blue eyes met grey ones from across the kitchen, and Levi wondered absentmindedly what exactly the proper protocol for this sort of situation was. Erwin's hands appeared relatively unscathed, although the toaster's face was glowing an alarming red and Levi sincerely hoped that Erwin had some form of health insurance in the case of an unprecedented explosion.

"What are you doing in my house?" he asked after a few moments, during which Erwin managed to splatter some thick brown stuff onto his shirt. "I thought you had a lot to do today?"

"I do. I did," Erwin said, still holding Levi's gaze as more of the thick brown sludge spilled over onto Levi's tile floor. "I was making dinner."

"It looks like you're spilling dinner on the floor instead of actually making it," Levi pointed out, edging past the rapidly growing puddle towards the pantry, where Sally was fully charged and ready to clean up whatever messes might be made that day. "And how did you get in?"

"I copied your key when you were still asleep last night."

Levi stopped, stared up at Erwin, who'd somehow managed to get some of the brown stuff in his hair. "That's a crime, you know," he said after a short moment. "I could report you to the police for such infractions."

Erwin smirked a bit, leaning back against the counter. "I suppose you'd like seeing me in cuffs?" he asked, arching a questioning eyebrow at Levi, whose mouth went dry at the very thought, and he turned back to the task at hand, swishing Sally in neat lines across the floor.

"Why are you here?" he asked, as Erwin rooted through his cabinets, reaching up into a top shelf and pulling out two ramekins that Levi hadn't seen in probably decades, or at the very least not since he'd moved into the flat. Levi watched with fascination as he poured the contents of the stainless steel bowl into the ramekins and set them in the fridge. "Surely you've got papers to be grading, or something like that."

"Your toaster burnt them," Erwin said cheerfully, pushing the ramekins into the fridge. "I set them down on the counter to read while I was making the roast, and I looked back and they were in flames." He indicated a pile of ash that Levi had not previously noted, sitting in the sink. "It's not a big deal, I'm sure Eren was just summarizing movies again or something of the like. The boy's not the brightest."

Levi smirked in satisfaction.

"I thought it was obvious; I'm here to defend my thesis," Erwin said, his voice practically a purr, and Levi's eyes followed Erwin's hand as it went up to his throat to loosen the knot of his tie. The effect would have been manyfold stronger, had Erwin's tie not been spattered with the ganache he'd been making.

"Right," Levi murmured, clearing his throat and looking anywhere but at Erwin. Nothing of the sort had ever happened before in his life; it was like something in one of those chick-flick movies that Levi would never tell a soul that he secretly enjoyed watching on Netflix. A past boyfriend had ridiculed him for that exact thing, when he'd discovered piles of DVDs with pastel covers hidden in shoeboxes underneath Levi's bed. After that, Levi had discovered the joys of Netflix and had even gone so far as to make an alternate account for the little sister he didn't have, who just so happened to be infatuated with chick flicks and romantic comedies.

"Go sit down or something," Erwin said, nudging him out of his own kitchen. "Dinner will be ready in a bit."

* * *

Levi would never claim to be a wine-drinker, but he did like the taste of it mellowing in his mouth, tucked high into the corners of his cheeks against the flavour of the roast which was, much to Levi's surprise, quite good. He'd never pegged Erwin for the type that could actually cook anything fairly decent.

It was quite a lovely dinner, very unlike their first dinner, and Levi found himself easing into laughter at Erwin's anecdotes about Eren and his antics, and the rest of his students. Though it wasn't quite like the romantic meals in the movies, complete with lace tablecloth and rose petals and candlelight, Levi found the edges of his vision softening and colouring rosy, found smiles easier and more comfortable.

He wasn't quite sure, it might have been the wine, or the absolutely phenomenal ganache that Erwin insisted on feeding him spoonful by spoonful, but he thought that perhaps it might be perfectly suitable to be a 'thing' with him.

* * *

"Wait," Levi murmured, his voice quivering dangerously on the side of a moan as Erwin gently pressed nibbles into the side of his neck. "You're going to leave mar - ah - ks."

"No more than the ones that are already there, I'm sure," Erwin breathed, but he acquiesced and pulled away from Levi's neck to press a kiss to his mouth, his tongue stroking and twirling rather elegantly around Levi's, pressing itself into the crevices of his mouth, tasting chocolate and wine, and swallowing Levi's moans. He pulled away, leaving Levi gasping for breath, and studied him with eyes that had darkened with desire. "I suppose I'll just have to leave them in other places, won't I?" he said, his gaze predatory as it travelled the length of Levi's body, lingering on his cock, which had already started to stiffen and flush rosy.

"Wait," Levi whispered, pleading, as strands of Erwin's blonde hair tickled at his stomach as Erwin lowered himself to press kisses to the flushed head of Levi's cock. He grasped handfuls of Erwin's hair, tugging, trying to ground himself as Erwin opened his mouth and took him in, tongue tracing wickedly delicious circles around the tip, dipping lightly into the slit, tasting bitterness and Levi, and Levi was absolutely sure that he was hallucinating, there was no way those whimpers were coming from him, surely not -

He tossed his head back into his pillows, worrying his lower lip between his teeth, his hips arching beneath Erwin's ministrations, and tried to think of something, anything, to distract him, numbers, Zöe's weapons of biological warfare, how many milliseconds it took to steam milk perfectly, trying desperately not to come, not just yet, it was too perfect of a moment and Levi wished he could stay suspended in time at this particular instance.

He didn't notice Erwin's thick fingers slotting into him and stretching gently until the tip of Erwin's middle finger brushed against his prostate. He gasped, a shudder racking its way up his spine, and twisted his fingers into Erwin's hair even harder, tugging at the roots.

"Oh my God," he murmured, "God, I think I'm going to come..."

"Well," Erwin said, his voice garbled from around Levi's aching flesh, and Levi risked a glance downwards to see Erwin's mouth stretched wide across his skin, deep blue eyes staring up at him, hands pressing his hips down into the covers, thumbs skirting along the hollows of skin stretched taut across his hipbones. He almost came from the sight alone. "You can just call me Erwin," Erwin said, his eyes teasing, and Levi wanted to slap him, but at that moment he did something particularly dexterous with his tongue and pressed a third finger into Levi, and Levi cried out, his voice breaking as his hips struggled up against Erwin's hands, spilling into his mouth.

When he opened his eyes again, his vision hazy, he looked down to find Erwin, lips smudged silvery, trailing kisses up his inner thighs, worrying milky skin between his teeth and pulling off with soft sucking pops that were sure to leave red circles.

"Surely no one's going to see these," he said, and Levi swallowed roughly. "Just me, hopefully," Erwin continued, looking up at Levi from between his legs, and Levi whined something unintelligible as Erwin pressed a soft kiss to the underside of his now-oversensitive cock. Something nudged against the side of Levi's ankle, something velvety hot, and Levi nudged it back, experimentally, watching as Erwin's eyes fluttered closed for just the quickest of moments before opening again and burning Levi to the core.

"I could...take care of that for you, if you want," Levi murmured, though he'd never been much of a blowjob-giver. He supposed he could let that slide, though, due to extenuating circumstances...

"Can I put it inside?" Erwin asked, his palms flat against Levi's inner thighs and pushing them apart gently.

"You didn't ask the other day," Levi grumbled, but Erwin wasn't waiting for an answer and Levi felt himself slowly stretching open, wider, wider, impossibly wider, until the head slipped in and he lost his breath in a shuddering moan. "Hey, I wasn't read -" His mouth fell open in a silent whine as Erwin slid the rest of the way in, seating himself burning and deep inside Levi, his hips twitching minutely, his jaw clenched as though he was restraining himself to the best of his abilities.

"Christ, you're so hot inside," Erwin murmured, his hips rolling forward and grinding into Levi's prostate. Levi shuddered, his hands reaching up of their own accord and clamping over Erwin's shoulders. "Like a glove."

"This was your plan the whole time," Levi muttered, but he couldn't deny the fact that, with every thrust, with every slow roll of his hips, he was starting to get hard again. He couldn't recall the last time he'd been able to do that; probably some time during his adolescence. "Had a lot of things to do, my ass."

"Well, yes, that was on the list," Erwin said, unfazed, as his hips slammed in particularly deliciously, and Levi choked on a scream. It was hard to believe, but there was a knot of heat sparking in the pit of his stomach again, tightening and tensing and growing in enormity with every thrust. "You're close again."

Levi opened his mouth to snap at him, yes, he was close again, thank you very much, he certainly was quite the observer, wasn't he, but Erwin silenced him by reaching a hand down and wrapping a hand around Levi's cock, thumb worrying at the weeping head, while his other hand took one of Levi's off his shoulders and laced their fingers together, pinning it down to the mattress to Levi's side. Erwin leaned down, his breath ghosting along Levi's lips, and Levi found his free hand unconsciously travelling to the back of Erwin's head, tangling itself in the dark strands there, pressing him down close into a kiss.

Levi could swear Erwin was smiling against his mouth, the bastard, as he rocked his hips forward, once, twice, thrice, and spilled himself into Levi; the blooming warmth inside him and the way Erwin's hand was teasing at the head of his cock had Levi coming within seconds, Erwin swallowing his breathless cry.

Erwin rolled off him a few moments later, resting for a few moments before getting out of bed and puttering about in the bathroom for a few moments while Levi was trying to summon enough energy to stand up and have a shower. His legs felt rather unstable, and he didn't trust them to carry him the short distance to his bathroom without giving out like jelly halfway through. He was just taking another deep breath and trying to muster the stamina for it, when Erwin returned, a damp washcloth in his hand, and began to wipe Levi down, paying special attention to his hips and thighs.

After he'd deemed Levi acceptably clean (Levi personally still felt a bit sticky), he discarded the washcloth on the nightstand and crawled back into bed beside him, his arms casually slipping around Levi's waist and shoulders, and Levi thought that it really did feel quite natural, the way he fit into the hollow of Erwin's body, his head tucked into the crook of Erwin's neck.

"I'll do your sheets later," Erwin yawned, and Levi could feel the syllables rumbling through his chest. "Unless you've got some special ritual for your washing machine, like counting out the soap flakes or whatever for Martha, I'm still confused as to why you give name tags to your appliances, that's really not normal behaviour..."

Erwin's voice trailed off, and Levi smiled sleepily, pressing a tiny kiss to the hollow of Erwin's throat before he, too, fell asleep, thinking that perhaps Erwin's proposal was quite fine indeed.


End file.
